President Trump hosts Canada’s Justin Trudeau at the White House

A day after Mexico’s 114-4 landslide vote to become the first country to ratify the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Washington today. In addition to meeting with President Donald J. Trump at the White House, the Prime Minister encouraged Congress to make USMCA a bipartisan priority.

“We’ve worked hard to build a great trade deal that’s good for Canadian workers, good for American workers, good for Mexican workers as well,” Prime Minister Trudeau said. “This is just a really great opportunity for us to continue to work and to develop and to build on the closest alliance in the world, between Canada and the United States.”

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President Trump said the new deal, which would replace the 25-year-old NAFTA, is a win for everybody. “It’s great for the farmers, manufacturers . . . It’s great for unions,” he said. It also puts all of North America on the same economic team. “In a trade sense, we’re competing with the European Union. We’re competing with China. It gives us a bigger dialogue. It gives us a much bigger platform.”

Outside of Washington, momentum is growing for USMCA. Today, Congressional leaders from both parties received a letter signed by a majority of the nation’s Governors, calling for swift passage of the deal. “Nearly 25 years after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, it is time to update our trade policies,” they write.

Former Democratic leaders have been vocal in their support for USMCA, as well. “Consider how USMCA would boost wages for workers in the auto industry, which supports over 7 million U.S. jobs,” former Vermont Governor and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean says. “It also makes it easier for Mexican workers to form unions and collectively bargain . . . thereby making it less attractive for U.S. companies to shift production and operations to our southern neighbor.”

The bottom line: “This deal has the strongest labor provisions of any U.S. trade agreement in history,” Dean says.

“I really believe that Nancy Pelosi and the House will approve it,” President Trump told reporters from the Oval Office today. “I think the Senate will approve it rapidly.”

President Trump is making the U.S.–Canada partnership stronger than ever.

President Trump: “We’ve come a long way” on USMCA

Video of the day: Ivanka Trump visits Charlotte

This week, Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump traveled with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to the Siemens Charlotte Energy Hub in North Carolina, where they learned more about the company’s world-class apprenticeship program.

Over the past year, Ms. Trump has traveled across the country, highlighting the programs that help reskill American workers for the jobs of tomorrow. Under President Trump’s Pledge to America’s Workers, which launched last summer, more than 9 million such workforce development opportunities have been created in the United States. Siemens USA alone has pledged 75,000 of those.

Photo of the Day

Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead

President Donald J. Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pose for a photo in the West Wing Lobby entrance of the White House | June 20, 2019